In early 2011 I joined a handful of people, working on what would years later become Nexus Brands Group. One of the first challenging projects I was tasked with, was to work with our industrial designer and bring to market a rotary-style tattoo machine for the TATSoul brand that would crush the competition. Most of the creative direction for both the product design and marketing collateral took inspiration from luxury vehicles. At the time, the best-selling rotary machines were promoting features surrounding motor specifications and performance, so there were a lot of easy parallels. We saw machines as a growing category that supply companies seemed unable to tap into because they weren’t innovating in the ways machine-focused brands and builders were. This machine needed to be different and perform better. After nearly 2 years of design, prototyping, testing and simultaneously developing strong B2B and B2C launch plans. The Valor Rotary hit the tattoo community.